by Richard Subber | Oct 24, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
turmoil in the reading
Book review:
The Homeplace
by Marilyn Nelson Waniek (b1946)
Prize-winning American poet
Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990
Thinking about writing this review of The Homeplace re-boots the cold explosion in my self.
Honestly, there was turmoil in this reading.
Marilyn Nelson Waniek is a respected black poet. I’m an old white guy who writes and cares about poetry.
I don’t read much poetry by other writers that appeals to me. This doesn’t make me special. I think it’s an ordinary experience.
When I say that much of Marilyn Nelson’s work doesn’t appeal to me, that doesn’t signify much of anything out of the ordinary.
When I say that some of the poems wrap their hands around my throat and squeeze directly through to my soul, it signifies exactly what those words mean.
It’s not “black poetry,” let’s get that straight. That term necessarily implies that there is “white poetry.” I think there are ways to characterize poetry, but the demeaning simplicity of “black poetry” or “white poetry” isn’t acceptable. I think it’s not possible. Poetry is personal, and it doesn’t have a skin color.
Here’s an excerpt from The Homeplace:
These are words from “Chosen,” an understated account of a white Southern master and Diverne, a young black woman who is his slave, and Pomp, their son.
“Diverne wanted to die, that August night
his face hung over hers, a sweating moon.
She wished so hard, she killed part of her heart
…And the man who came
out of a twelve-room house and ran to her
close shack across three yards that night, to leap
onto her cornshuck pallet. Pomp was their
share of the future. And it wasn’t rape.
In spite of her raw terror. And his whip.”
I’d like to say I think I want to walk a mile in Marilyn Nelson’s shoes.
Maybe I was able to trudge a few steps when I read her poems.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
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In high meadows: poems abide with 60 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 13, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
warmly readable…
Book review:
Sweet Juice and Ruby-Bitter Seed
by Merryn Rutledge
American Fork, Utah: Kelsay Books, 2023
69 pages
Merryn Rutledge writes poems like few people write poems.
There is no relentless rhyming, no uselessly bizarre collection of unrelated words.
These are poems written from the heart. They are invitations to feel what she feels.
They are warmly readable, both in silence and in your own voice.
These poems will lead you on some trails you may not have visited.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
A poet is a “maker”
…and it doesn’t have to rhyme…
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 8, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
…or grab a flashlight…
Book review:
Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)
New York: The Macmillan Company, c1914-1944, publ. 1967
306 pages
The reputation of Spoon River Anthology is indisputable.
The reality is a matter for each reader.
For my taste, this is an exotic but deadened miscellany that tirelessly revisits a few themes. I won’t say there’s no inspiration, but you need a miner’s headlamp to find it here and there.
Many of the folks who are pushing up daisies near the Spoon River just weren’t really terribly interesting people when they were alive.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 6, 2026 | Poetry, Reviews of other poets
Got “repining”?
I read lots of poetry—colonial, classic American, modern—and I don’t find much that I like.
This is puzzling to me. I think hard about what I like and dislike about poetry, especially my own poetry. I’m still not prepared to offer any explanation much beyond my sincere failure to discern anything meaningful in the kind of poetry I classify as “obscure,” you know, the wayward romp through disconnected words and disjoint images, and the wanton disregard of verb tense/pronoun antecedents/subject and verb relationships/sentence structure…I think you may have seen this kind of wantonly weird stuff:
“Sky falls cloud sheep bray at starry islands in my hoping
are them my lost love I step around the dog poo…”
I just rapped that out this minute. No poetic inspiration involved. It doesn’t make me proud. I’m trying to get to a point:
I’ve read a bit of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Longfellow was a lyric poet who tried his hand at free verse, although much of his work is constrained to the often stultifying shackle of line after line and page after page of rhyme. Longfellow writes at length. I confess I can’t make myself keep turning the pages to read “Evangeline” and “The Song of Hiawatha.” I do understand that this fashion of poetry was written and enjoyed before the successive advents of radio, TV, Sony Walkman and the internet. I guess reading a poem for an hour or so was more doable in the 19th century.
Longfellow does offer something to me in his more bite-size poetry. He was a capable wordsmith and he dreamed out images and insights and perspectives that appeal to me, and even nudge me to wakefulness.
In “Snow-Flakes” he placidly describes a snowfall:
“Out of the bosom of the Air,
…The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air…”
In “The Rainy Day” he says something we all know:
“…Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”
Thus, in Longfellow, something of poetry.
Admit it, we don’t use “repining” often enough
in our casual conversations.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: A Cold Welcome
The culprit was global cooling,
500 years ago…
by Sam White
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Aug 9, 2026 | Language, Poetry, Reviews of other poets, Tidbits
…words can be pictures…
“The world is never the same
once a good poem has been added to it.”
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Welsh poet and writer
Dylan could have said “A poet is never the same after writing a good poem,” or “A person is never the same after reading or hearing a good poem.”
I’m in love with words, and I love to use the best words to create poems that have clarity and character.
Sometimes I think of my work as “literal poetry.” I don’t put my pen down until I’ve said exactly what I feel, exactly what I mean to say, so that you, as the reader or listener, will have no doubt about it. I want to write poems that don’t need to be explained—what you see is what it is. I want to write poems that express deep human emotions, and thoughtful observations, and precise meanings.
I am a poet, a writer, a teacher, a moralist, a historian, and an unflinching student of human nature. I think a lot. I strive to express truth and give context—both rational and emotional—to reality.
I think words can be pictures, and lovely songs, and bodacious scents, and private flavors, and early morning caresses that wake each part of me, one at a time. I know some of those words, and, from time to time, I write some of them.
I read a lot of poetry, including the classic poets like Homer and poets in America and poets around the world who have written since ancient times to modern times. Occasionally I find a poem, or a phrase, or an image that is intensely intuitive, or wonderfully imaginative, or just plain beautiful. I offer those words from other poets for your enjoyment.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
“Fishering,” by Brian Doyle
…what meets the eye…
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | May 26, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
over-engineered and under-imagined…
Book review:
Collected Poems
by Charles Kenneth “C. K.” Williams (1936-2015)
Won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006
682 pages
Williams was a prolific poet.
His work is relentlessly structural, to the point of being stylized. He’s in love with lines that are almost the same length, and too long for the page. In too many of his Collected Poems, Williams allows every line of text to stray down to the next line, thus abandoning most of the dramatic effects of artful enjambment.
Williams has over-engineered his poetry, for my taste. I tried reading the poems aloud, but that tiresome exercise confirmed my ennui instead of adding some vitality.
For me, whatever Williams was trying to say has been lost in the dusty storeroom where he has neatly boxed and labeled his poems.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
St. Ives, another look…
less than meets the eye
by Robert Louis Stevenson
(a book review)
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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